Nimi Khanna

The Magic Creator

Meet Nimi Khanna, a woman with boundless energy and unstoppable creativity. Thinking out of the box is her forte, creating magic from things mundane, her genetic code. Art, for her, is everywhere, in everything and she celebrates and rejoices every moment of life.

Text & Photographs: Farzana Contractor

"The old Baby Belling is doing the
honours tonight,
Wafting aromas of days gone by...
I give two hoots to those micro waves,
Like maniacs in a hurry to bake,
Now banished forever from this estate,
Slow and steady, I am back in the race,
But who is my guest tonight...?"

It was I. I, who was the guest that night. And I was sitting across an old, handsome, rustic teak table, wine glass in hand, listening to Nimi Khanna, who was unabashedly and rather dramatically, belting out a poem she had written especially for me, her "revered" guest.

A guest who had flown down on a dawn flight, from Bombay to Delhi, who she had come and fetched in her car at the airport and together they had driven down for 10 hours meandering through highways and by-lanes to reach Bhowali, her Himalayan haven tucked in a forest, on  hills dotted with lakes, very close to Nainital.

And how did this come about? Well, it was a Facebook connect. An intriguing message posted on my wall, leaped out at me, perchance, one idle evening that I was "surfing" my posts at my own hilly outpost which is Panchgani! I discovered an unread message sent three years ago and thinking it was remiss of me to have not responded that long, I decided to call the person, who had thoughtfully added her number in the message. It was Nimi Khanna.

Like her post, she was a discovery. And here I was now, all set to do a story on her. And her unique, creative and curious life.

First, I must talk about Nandalaya, a few acres of land which Nimi and her husband Pawan, had bought about a decade ago and transformed into a fairy tale place. A Tinkerbell and Cinderella kind of place, with its fair share of pumpkins, witches and broomsticks and scarecrows and leeches complete. More about them blood sucking leeches later, though...

Into Nandalaya, "the Abode of my Blue Lord," as Nimi puts it, she weaved in her home, a wooden structure which was to become like Lord Krishna, her very own abode in the hills. A cozy cottage, with dozens of cow bells of all shape and hue at the entrance, with a tiny living room bursting with unique artifacts, including a huge wooden candle chandelier dangling from the ceiling on an iron chain in the centre of the room which once hung in an old church somewhere. There was an alcove converted into a study and a conservatory styled kitchen with ancient culinary gadgets, pots and pans and old-fashioned jars. This was connected by a spiral staircase to a bedroom above, housing the largest four poster bed I have seen.

The inscription on the small brass name plate at the door read, Anardana. Intrigued, I asked Nimi, why seed of the pomegranate, why not just the fruit, anar? Why the dana? I repeated. And she replied, "Well, the seed is something we all take for granted, but it is the seed that is important, not the fruit - which is beautiful to look at and lovely to eat, but it's the seed, the continuity... I have named my house after the tiny seed of a pomegranate in all the humility that it denotes..."

Gives you insight into the mind, heart, thinking, feeling and being of a woman called Nimi Khanna, doesn't it?

She is special, for sure. Even if there may be those who may not understand her thinking or her depth of creativity, or misunderstand her intensity, who may in their haste or lack of taste, label her batty. Which is another way of looking at genius. Which in essence is what Nimi is all about. A creative genius to the core. You can give her anything, any odd thing and she will transform it into a thing of beauty!

She has an eye for the rare, the unique, the different. She loves copper and pewter, glass and wood, indeed all kinds of metals and materials. There is nothing that is rubbish to her, everything has an old-world charm to it and she can sift through rubble and dust to pull out something that can become a prized possession. And she has many such all over Anardana and indeed all of Nandalaya! Which by the way, also includes two guest cottages, and a tiny library set in an elfin huddle, down the garden path, which looks like a cute doll house with a sweet little pantry thrown in too. "Just in case I want to make myself some coffee when I am down here," quips Nimi. Ya sure, a caffeine fix is most necessary, especially in the cold Himalayas!

Nimi never did plan these various spaces. They just grew organically, she enlightens. Additions happened as time went by and the need arose.

"So how did Nimi Khanna arrive at this stage where she became an obsessive collector of all things strange and beautiful?" I ask of my hostess sitting at the teak-wood table in the charming kitchen.

"Oh, all this is the result of just a year's job as an Interior Designer in USA, many moons ago!" starts off Nimi. "Only twelve months, no more no less, way back in the 1969. It was with a company that dealt in carpets  and fabrics for hotels and theatres that gave me the rainbow experience of a lifetime. Until then I had seen a gamut of what I was dealing with only in glossy magazines in India while studying in the Delhi Polytechnic College. What a playfield my life in New York turned out to be, a virtual toyland. The best of the best, velvets, chenilles, satins, silks of the East. A palette of solid colours and a storehouse of embroidered embossed and cut velvets. Rolls and rolls. Coming to their carpet stock, their inventory would have put Ali's Magic Carpets to shame! They imported the best not only from India but the world. The knottage, the pile, the wool, the silks threw me into a spin where I started to ride these beauties in my dream!"

"New York was the take-off point. Christmas was in the air. The city was snowed in by Christmas decorations. I witnessed  the grandiose of this season. It was monumental, awe-inspiring and opened a totally new world of design and creativity to me."

Soon enough it was time for Nimi to return home... "But I had a christmas gift waiting for me in India, a job with the Oberoi group in Delhi! Reena Ripjit Singh, one of the most glamourous interior designers, was working for this group and was moving on to consult with Dale Keller. She referred me to her boss and there I was, in the saddle!" reminisces Nimi.

"I could not have done better than to get a job with the best of best hoteliers and the bestest property. Slowly I got into their systems of becoming the in-house designer of their flagship hotel, The Oberoi Intercontinental. Before the next year was out, Christmas decorations fell into my lap. In those days, Mr Rai Bahadur used to get Mr Sibilia from Italy to dress up the hotel who unfortunately fell ill. It was my star moment... NEW YORK NEW YORK, I was singing to myself and Chritsmas  of 1970 came alive. Boy oh boy did I have a blast! Remember this was in India and all the designs were drawn on paper and custom-made. The arts and crafts trust that was set up by Kamladevi Chattopadhyay was commissioned to doing this. "Voila,  Christmas morning and the hotel lobby made headlines in The Stateman. The design office got a handwritten appreciation note from Rai Bahadur! I was on a roll!"

"Christmas became a part of my life. Each year through the years even after I left the Oberoi group I started doing the ITC Hotels. My installations went bigger and higher till a few years ago when the management decided not to allocate those kind of budgets."

"Christmas did touch my soul. Those fairytale stories brought out the child in me and I carry that joy and celebration in my life till today."

So professionally, while Nimi was deeply involved in designing restaurants, public spaces and guest rooms for the Oberoi group, marriage happened and soon after her twin sons, Tishya and Atin were born and compelled her to take a sabbatical. "At Rai Bahadur's insistence I delved into manufacturing furniture for them, but that lasted not even a year. The creativity and working on the drawing board were strong urges that could not be squashed."

"I moved on to doing freelance consultancy with the ITC group. My star moment with them was the creation of their rooftop restaurant The Westview at Maurya Sheraton. Both Habib Rehman and Nakul Anand had given me the reins to design and conceive this space with their team. I went on to design their iconic restaurant in Bombay, Dum Pukht..."

We talked into the night, sitting there in the glass-enclosed kitchen with all sorts of sounds emanating from the forest around.  Even as she spoke I drifted off, in my own thoughts... Nimi only had to climb up the spiral to her room, but I had to walk to my cottage in the dark, with Nathu, her man Friday shining the torch. Believe me, it was not leopards and other wild beasts I was worried about, but the millions of leeches, crawling about on the forest floor. The first time I had encountered such dreadful experience. Did you know a leech is only as large as a comma on this page? That it just leaps on to your shoe, makes its way to a vein somewhere and stays stuck there sucking your blood and you are totally oblivious to it... until you notice this fat blob of blood on your ankle or somewhere and faint seeing the gross thing!

Much to Nimi's mirth and perhaps annoyance I could not handle it. And Nathu would follow me around with a salt bottle in hand, the only weapon against leeches. Smear, smear, smear... Fortunately the leech infestation happens only during the rains.

I came out of my leech fear reverie hearing Nimi softly continuing... "Nandalaya, my hill home in the Himalayas has become a Guru to me. It has silenced me. No more am I that designer, no more am I that actor, no more am I that who I was... now I am simply His Gardener. One who tends to His seeds. The seeds which turn into plants, flower and bloom and my bee boxes buzz buzzzzz and buzzzzz. Instantly that  old chef in me thinks of litres of honey that I will harvest, drizzle onto my pancakes. The designer lurking in me draws up visuals of bottled glass honey jars, bowed up in chintz fabric and showed off on my kitchen shelves..." she seems to be in a trance.

Shhhhhh... the silence is supreme, the  sensitivity is too deep now and I just sit and watch and listen to Nimi as she continues... "The  bees know exactly what they are seeking from  the flower and they leave the flower undisturbed, the petals intact, so I can continue enjoying the blooms and leave their boxes ALONE! Never have I harvested them, my pancakes and jars do not miss it..."